Peter Jennings' final report reveals a national crisis
Peter Jennings' final report reveals a national crisis
ABC News anchor Peter Jennings' final report — a documentary that explains in simple terms our country's exasperating health-care predicament — airs tonight, four months after his death.
Do you want to know who to blame for the high cost of health insurance? Have you had it up to here with even trying to find an insurer who will accept your money and enroll you as a client? Are you fed up with your employers' annual squeeze play, the one that shifts more of the cost of health care to you?
Peter Jennings Reporting: Breakdown — America's Health Insurance Crisis (9 p.m., Channel 13) won't soothe your savage breast but it will lay out what's what.
Introduced by Charlie Gibson, who explains that Jennings reported most of the story before he was diagnosed with lung cancer, the documentary interviews employers, insurers and everyday people from across the country. First stop: Houston.
Houston's health-care situation is dire — 1.1 million without insurance (and that's not counting Hurricane Katrina evacuees); an alarming, but typical five- to six-hour emergency-room rate on a Saturday night; ambulances stacked up with patients and no place to put them.
"We're full virtually all the time," says Dr. Ken Mattox, chief of staff at Ben Taub Hospital. "We have fewer functional beds and operating rooms than we had when Ben Taub opened in 1963."
If you thought Houston had one of the greatest medical centers in the world, you're not wrong. The reason for the shortage? "Emergency rooms are money losers," says Robert Mosbacher, who recently led a team studying health care in Houston. "When people pay little or nothing, that represents a loss for the hospital."
Ah, so freeloaders are to blame for the health-care crisis? Not exactly. Yes, there are many people who cannot afford insurance, but there are also millions who would love to pay but are rejected by insurers for all sorts of pre-existing conditions, including (wait for it) acne and hay fever.
And there are some businesses that can no longer afford to offer insurance. "For many small companies, the price of insurance is soon going to equal the average wage, and that's not sustainable," says Todd McCracken of the National Small Business Administration.
The problems are odious for even the biggest companies. General Motors, which just laid off 30,000 workers, has fantastic health benefits. But this year, GM will spend $2.7 billion on steel for its cars and $5.7 billion on health care for its employees. If auto prices induce sticker shock, it's because those health-care costs are built into the price.
On and on this special goes. Surely, it suggests, the insurance companies are to blame for sky-high costs. Not according to government studies that show 87 cents of every dollar going to health care, with the remainder covering service fees and the like.
The problem could be us. John Mackey, the Austin man responsible for the Whole Foods supermarket chain, argues that people are too insulated from health-care costs because they only have to come up with that relatively small co-pay. His theory is that if people were spending their own money, they'd shop for generics and ask how much something costs before spending blindly.
The fault doesn't necessarily fall at the feet of health-care providers, either. Yes, costs are rising, but according to the report, we're having expensive and often unneeded procedures (MRIs, for example) and spending major bucks for drugs (like Vioxx) that are unsafe and offer no more protection than over-the-counter medication.
It's a dizzying documentary, and that's precisely the point: This is a mess that must be addressed, but it will take time and patience to untangle. Hats off to Jennings and ABC for getting the ball rolling. With Jennings' passing, here's hoping no one drops that ball.
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